by Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

by Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder told a congressional panel that the Justice Department's criminal inquiry into the IRS will be national in scope and warned that officials would be held accountable if laws were broken.

In a sometimes-contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing that also examined the Justice Department's secret seizure of Associated Press communications in a leak investigation and the handling of the Boston Marathon bombing inquiry, Holder said authorities would be reviewing a range of possible violations in connection with disclosures that IRS workers gave closer scrutiny to conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, whose congressional district includes Cincinnati where the IRS' questionable activities are believed to have started, asked whether the agency's actions were confined only to that office.

"I simply don't know,'' Holder said. "We've only begun our investigation. â?¦ We will be appropriately aggressive and let the facts take us where they may.''

Venting frustration with a series of scandals shadowing the Obama administration, including the IRS disclosures and the AP seizures, both Republican and Democratic members of the sharply divided panel expressed rare unity in their rebuke of the IRS.

"Targeting private citizens based on their political views - whether on the left or the right - has absolutely no place in our government,'' said Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the panel's ranking Democrat.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, called the IRS' activities a "threat to our democracy,'' while Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., said the discriminatory IRS activities were "chilling.''

Jordan went further, accusing Lois Lerner, director of the IRS' Exempt Status Division, of being untruthful in past congressional communications and asked that the criminal inquiry not interfere with planned congressional investigations of the agency.

"We will try to investigate in such a way that it doesn't impede'' congressional inquiries, Holder said.

Holder also faced pointed questions about the Justice Department's decision to seize communications involving 20 reporters and editors of the AP over a period of two months related to leaks of classified information about the organization's reports last year about a foiled terrorist plot.

The attorney general, who recused himself from the inquiry soon after it was launched last year, pledged to launch an "after-action analysis'' of the department's decision but only after the probe was completed.

"It seems to me that the damage to a free press has been substantial,'' said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., referring to the department's action.

Holder said the decision to subpoena the records was made by Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole, after the attorney general had recused himself. Holder said he removed himself because he had access to the information that is the subject of the leak investigation. He also acknowledged Wednesday that his own telephone records had been reviewed as part of the federal leak investigation.

"I am a fact witness,'' Holder said, adding that other members of the Justice Department's National Security Division have been recused from the inquiry. "I was a possessor of the information.''

The tone of the hearing turned particularly bitter during discussion of an unrelated issue when Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accused the Justice Department of withholding information related to a separate congressional hearing involving Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, the Obama administration's current nominee to head the Department of Labor.